Abstract
Sports, games, and physical cultures are often mentioned in popular definitions around fun and play— as activities that invoke a specific sense of enjoyment and joy, conceptualised broadly as fun. In the Indian context, scholars have noted that leisure, recreation, and fun continue to be gendered—as spaces and sensations that are not immediately accessible to women. While sports, games, physical cultures and movement-based leisure practices are supposed to be “fun”, discourses around these activities rarely mention or deal with the idea of fun—and instead are performance, efficiency or meritocracy-oriented. In this regard, I ask: how can sport and movement-based leisure activities for women in India be centred around the idea of fun, and what kinds of tensions does that invoke? Using multiple in-depth interviews with the creator of a women-only playground in rural Kerala and observations from the (play)ground, I argue that fun can be a resourceful emotion and tool to consolidate sport and movement-based leisure activities for women. I find that while fun simultaneously runs the risk of being co-opted into health and self-defence agendas, its staunch orientation towards joy and enjoyment poses a radical approach towards sport for women. Here, I specifically focus on physical activities that demand an overt occupation of open, public spaces and ask whether conceptualisations around fun can activate a serious feminist politics in India. This paper imagines a ‘playful’ future for women in India, wherein they get to claim public spaces to play leisurely, with minimal concerns around demonstrating respectability and purpose.
Presenters
Amritha MohanPhD Candidate, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Sporting Cultures and Identities
KEYWORDS
Fun, Leisure, Women, Playgrounds, Kerala, Sport, India
